Menno van Doorn

This report, the third in the Autopilot series, explores how Europe can rethink its "golden cage" of dependency, and rebuild a technological backbone resilient to external pressure. Key Themes Explored: 1) The Three Gates of Access Denied: Sovereignty is now limited across three critical layers: Systems (the digital kill switch), Markets (the economic lever of tariffs and restrictions), and Culture (the subtle embedding of foreign norms in AI models). 2) Technology as Soft Power: Software and AI are not neutral; they carry the worldview of their creators. The report warns that by adopting IT structures, and specifically AI, organisations risks importing epistemologies that subtly reshape its cultural and democratic processes. 3) Alternatives and European pioneers: which alternatives are out there and which organisations and countries have already taken steps on the Sovereignty spectra? 4) The CIO Sovereignty Agenda. The report provides a practical framework for CIOs to assess mission-critical capabilities and preserve "room to manoeuvre" by designing for replaceability and architectural flexibility.

A quiet but significant transformation is taking place in the way work is done. Not only our tools are changing, but thinking, speaking and creating are merging together. The rise of vibe coding, an AI-driven practice that turns intentions expressed in natural language into functioning designs or code, shows how technology is reshaping the very foundations of work. What began as an experimental tool for developers is now finding its way into many other areas, including marketing, human resource management, consultancy and decision-making. In some situations, a single prompt can produce results that once required several people to plan or execute. This changes not only how work is carried out, but also how it is coordinated, how roles are divided and what it means to be productive. In this report, we examine how this development is unfolding through three scenarios for the future of work. We explore how organisations may be moving towards a form of vibe architecture: an infrastructure of AI systems that do more than merely assist. They contribute original ideas, help build software and sometimes even initiate decisions. Alongside concrete examples, we address the organisational and ethical questions emerging from this shift.

We stand on the threshold of a new era in which artificial intelligence no longer merely supports, but reasons and acts independently. AI agents take over tasks, make decisions, and sometimes appear to operate almost autonomously. The big question is: do we leave this autopilot on, or do we keep our hands on the wheel? In a world where we seem to be losing our grip altogether, the “autopilot on or off” question cannot be answered from a purely technological perspective. Looking at the power play of Big Tech companies, the interests at stake, and the connection with democratic and ecological processes, it becomes crucial to map the broader perspective as well. Understanding both the technology and the culture underlying AI agents is a prerequisite for any IT decision-maker who wants to engage with them.

If you are looking for longer-term footing, this report puts you comfortably in your seat. Feel free to think of a timeframe of 50, 60, possibly even 100 years or more. Let’s take 2125 as a starting point.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as ‘the’ new interface can be felt in many organisations. The use of AI for information gathering, also known as ‘prompting’ is becoming more commonly used. Prior knowledge is less important on the work floor as AI tirelessly provides relevant answers. In your organisation, you might see a discord between people who won’t have any of it yet, on one side, and those who fully embrace AI, on the other. With the latter not fully committing as necessary guidelines, or ‘guardrails’, are still in development.

For years, technology positivists have been longing for it: the next iPhone moment. A technology that would be so revolutionary that it would turn everyone’s life upside down. For years, prophets have been prognosticating that it would be the blockchain, but a multitude of applications failed to materialize. After that, this digital ledger gave way to the headsets of virtual reality. The Metaverse would surely be the next big thing and we would meet, play and live in 3D. But adoption turned out to be many times slower than predicted and enthusiasm faded away.

The main challenges we face today are the result of two major experiments. One experiment started quite recently, when OpenAI at the end of 2022 decided to release a new form of artificial intelligence (AI) to the general public. At stellar pace, people all over the world flocked to it. The creators of ChatGPT are fascinatingly observing us from their laboratory as their unknowing guinea pigs. The second experiment started some seventy years ago with the great acceleration of the economy. Unprecedented year-on-year growth, based on the technological breakthroughs of the industrial revolution, set thetone for today’s expectations. Products, technology and services came in abundance. Inventors and organizations alike, watched with fascination as this growth experiment dramatically changed our lives. Scarcity in Abundance is an exploration of where these two experiments can lead to. For example, an abundance of artificial intelligence in combination with a scarcity of products, resources and nature. Connecting the two is an appealing thought. Could the one offer the solution of the other? After all, super technology such as AI is capable of a lot. But what about culture and nature, that evolve according to their own rules?

Get on a rollercoaster of disinformation and media manipulation. From lying hieroglyphs to computer-generated influencers and the future of deepfakes. People have always felt the need to play with reality, but never before has it been so easy and believable as now. How do we keep a grip on the information society now that artificial intelligence is getting involved in the manipulation game? Unlike most books about fading realities, Real Fake looks beyond the doom scenarios. Using inspiring restoration stories and a new set of Reality Ethics, the authors of Real Fake outline a hopeful future for the playful human. “Real Fake educates, terrifies, and stimulates simultaneously. Nascent synthetic media technology has the potential to create mayhem or happiness for society -- the authors brilliantly paint a picture of how this battle will play out over the next ten years. And most interestingly, they predict the "democratization of creativity" -- how the new digital tools will unleash a dynamic and vital era of marketing, commerce, and art.” George F. Colony, CEO, Forrester "As someone who has studied authenticity (real vs. fake) and the rise of digital technology (real vs. virtual), no one has intertwined these topics in as interesting, insightful, and indispensable a narrative as the authors of Real Fake. Digital technology is giving us something akin to superpowers. Will we use them to obliterate the distinctions between authenticity and inauthenticity, reality and virtuality, human and machine? Or will we find a path into a future that preserves what makes us human while ennobling our technology in service to our innate needs? Real Fake says yes." -- B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money “An extremely authentic book!” Daisy Williams, virtual human

In this new whitepaper, the “Seven principles for a new agenda for work” are meant as a reference for your strategic choices on the new normal. “The Future of Life” expresses just the idea that how we want to live our lives dominates how the future of work will evolve. The collective Covid experience will leave its mark on the future. How all of this will eventually play out needs to be seen. But what stands out is the understanding how much personal life and working life are intertwined. How culture and value shifts in society already leave their mark on business strategy. And how new media technologies are turning people into media and organizations into broadcasters. In times of transformational leadership we need a new agenda. All our seven principles are based on magic and need support from new leadership and new technologies. Look for the magicians in your organization and let them lead you towards an organization that is: Employee Obsessed Serendipity proof Creativity Online A Platform for Meaning Asynchronous A Media Company Fan-based not Customer-based

Our new report, Infinite Machine Creativity, urges us to rethink creativity; to embrace machine creativity. The report examines the journey from students wondering whether computers can use their fantasy, to the development of a new breed of artificial intelligence (AI) known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). It describes how GANs have recently proven to deliver original and effective ideas. These two keywords combined define the word creativity. So, your ideas around creativity should be reset. Machines can be creative, but in a different way to humans, since machines lack a soul, a drive, a consciousness. The report examines the huge potential to accelerate innovation when the human soul and the creative machine come together. It argues that those organizations able to figure out how creative machines and creative people can collaborate will be the inventors and creators of tomorrow.

New Report: Utopia for Executives There are certain moments in time when collective dreams are more in vogue, more sought after, than at other moments. Societies seem to be stable for long periods and then – bang – doubt and uncertainty begins to pour in. People start asking themselves “Is this the world in which I want my children to grow up in?” or “Why is everything moving so slowly,  we need to take action now.” It is in these ‘fuzzy periods’ that the popular vote is on the move and society looks for new narratives, a new Utopia. It's at these moments that massive changes in how we run our economy start to evolve. For organizations there is a clear and bold message: to stay relevant in the 21st-century economy, you need to be driven by a strong purpose. The days of the Milton Friedman doctrine is over.  It’s about equality and “resetting capitalism”, as espoused by the Financial Times newspaper earlier this year. In Utopia for Executives we explain why now society is making this drastic turn, what it means for organizations, and what to prepare for. We present fresh, visionary thinking, from some of the world’s most profound thinkers in the fields of technology, economy and wellbeing. Some of it is dystopian, with a bleak outlook for society and business if we don’t have a true purpose to what we’re doing. Some of it is uplifting, with a belief that we face a new golden age that’s been preceded by a massive technological shift – but only if we focus on an inclusive, planet-centric world. Utopia for executives is our fourth report on Digital Happiness.

Fake or fact? Why a new generation workforce is better equipped to manage digital and social media than its predecessors. Discover how research into the characteristics of born-digital youngsters reveals that authenticity is key to this generation’s pursuit of happiness – and why helping them identify what is real and what is fake is an ongoing challenge. Find out what a new generation workforce values most in the modern enterprise. The third report in Sogeti’s Digital Happiness series charts the rise of a new generation of influencers – post-millennial young people for whom the concept of digital ‘transformation’ is alien. Digital and new media behaviors are simply ‘normal’ to these Gen-Z youngsters, for whom being an influencer or following their favorite influencers (fake or real) are part and parcel of everyday life. Our report ‘The synthetic generation - Growing up in an uncertain changing world’ argues that this new generation has a different value compass than even the millennials of just a few years ago. More secular. More self-actualized. More protected (by their parents). More interested in making an impact on the world than the generations that immediately precede them. This is a neo-romantic generation. What impact will they have – The Founders, Homelanders, the fluid generation, Gen-Zers – on the workplace of tomorrow? The report argues that first employers must understand the power of the influencers.  Second, aligning your brand or organization with influencers – or being an influencer – is key to success. Third: Gen-Z employees are better equipped to handle themselves in this new world than you might imagine – real or fake, they get it. And the last and definitely not least: being an ethical and inclusive employer with a ‘purpose’ counts to them. They're 'woke'.

Digital happiness is rapidly becoming the new frontier of competition. New digital opportunities can make our lives easier, more efficient, safer, and more joyful. You may ask yourself where to begin and which needs to prioritize, but one thing is clear: only focussing on efficiency and effectivity is not enough anymore. Customers and employees are already two steps ahead by actually living in a happiness economy. They are becoming more selective when looking for happiness and a purpose, making the prudent use of technology an additional differentiator. Their findings and judgments are shared in reviews and ratings, giving helpful insights for shopping customers who need these happiness ratings. Enhanced by a customer-centric mindset, it is experience and emotion that are today’s differentiators. Technology empowers organizations to understand these emotions, to persuade people with hyper-personalized touch points, and to directly impact their happiness and sadness. Those who miss this societal trend will have a hard time winning the hearts of the customer and new employees. The advanced state of digitization today requires a holistic approach with the ultimate question in mind: what is the main goal of the products, services, and organization and how do they contribute to the digital happiness of the customer? In this report, we explore three key questions. First, what is the potential advantage of aiming for happiness? Second, how does digital technology impact our individual happiness? And third, what role must organizations play as guardians of the happiness of their customers and employees?

More and more companies are now taking action with more than a third of the organizations applying AI at scale. Place AI at the heart of your digital activities, that is the most important message. After decades of too much promise from technology, we now see a breakthrough in the realization of concrete business value. A new AI focus is essential because your competitors will certainly use the learning acceleration offered by AI’s specific capabilities to gain a head start. The last in a series of four qualitative research reports on the topic of Machine Intelligence, ‘AI First: Learning from the machine’ states that profit and economic growth go hand in hand with the proactive deployment of AI. It further asserts that companies can raise their Corporate IQ by embarking on a new journey of discovery built on intelligent machines. ‘AI First: Learning from the machine’ explores the latest developments on the journey to being an AI-first organization and recommends a number of actions for improving Corporate IQ with a better understanding of the relationship between man and machine.

In our first report Things: Internet of Business Opportunities we reported on a tipping point concerning a dazzling impact on the whole economy. Connected things offer new opportunities to combat waste in the broadest sense of the term. This waste occurs among all parties: clients, suppliers, governmental bodies, service providers and the manufacturing industry. Applying digital things, sensors, actuators, apps and SMACT demands a certain mindset as well as concrete actions to optimize process and event chains, and to translate surprising new opportunities into new products and services. Our report offers an overview of recent developments and tips to accelerate your Things approach.

In the second report we focused on the personalized internet of things. We are witnessing a computer boom in terms of kinds, shapes and sizes – around, on or inside the body. Therefore we explored the coming transition toward a more empathic and contextual form of computerization. The emergence of wearable computing and other forms of empathic ‘things’ seems a logical further step: even more intimate, more human-oriented, and ubiquitous. We explored this development and present seven manifestations that can define the impact on business, such as the ‘quantified employee’ and the ‘body as the new password’.

In our last report we took the city as the centre of things and asked ourselves: when will the Internet change our cities like it changed our lives? The report shows how the five basic SMACT technologies are moving the creation of 21st century urban environments into top gear. We provide a status update on Smart Cities today and how developments like Senseable Cities and Cities as a Platform provide both new dynamics and opportunities for blending the digital and the physical infrastructure of our world together. SMACT will transform the city into a platform to blend bricks and clicks seamlessly together. The report provides a analysis of how this is already becoming a reality for retailers and presents what companies and organizations of all trades could learn from the accelerating convergence of bricks and clicks.

The fourth stage of the Industrial Revolution is upon us due to the far-reaching integration, accelerated by the Internet of Things, of Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT). This creates completely new opportunities as a result of new combinations of mental, physical and mechanical work by integrating the internet, sensors and embedded systems. The Internet of Things enabled IT/OT convergence leads to cost reduction as a consequence of predictive maintenance, speed and intelligence, thanks to Machine-to-Machine communication and improved forms of Human-Machine Interaction. M2M interaction between and within machines and systems is the cyber-physical heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. End-to-end ecosystems – from design and production to client interaction and advanced Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) – should be focused on a future in which appliances, devices, things and machines for professionals and private people will communicate with central systems, with one another, and with users for the purpose of providing the best possible facilities to makers, service providers, legislators and customers. Organizations should put IT-OT integration on their digital transformation roadmap, focusing their attention and knowledge from various disciplines, ranging from connectivity, infrastructure, standardization, work processes and risk management to human resources and marketing. The new VINT report provides insights into the IT-OT fusion and presents three recommendations to speed up this integration.

Innovation fuels the economy, prosperity and progress. In the present age of computers, the internet and ever smarter software, its sources are to be found all around us. To tap into this burgeoning abundance, organizations cannot avoid making themselves more open to the new free-flow of business opportunities. Above all, their ideas must be effectively “worked out” in intensive interaction with the outside world, with partners, knowledge institutes, competitors and individuals. Expert users now have a prominent role to play in this dynamic. Such was already the case in the development of open-source software, but this trend has now been clearly adopted in other economic sectors. Menno van Doorn and Jaap Bloem are affiliated with the Sogeti Institute for the Analysis of New Technology VINT (Vision Inspiration Navigation Trends). In its Business Technology Update program, VINT organizes seminars on various subjects, such as Web 2.0, cybercrime, IT governance, globalization, and open innovation. The institute also hosts a large annual symposium; publishes articles, columns and tailored reports; and organizes management lunches, sessions on business-technology state of affairs as well as dinner forums. The Sogeti Institute for the Analysis of New Technology VINT was established in 1994. With VINT, Sogeti would like to inspire organizations concerning innovations in information technology and their impact. VINT operates in close collaboration with its Recommendation Committee, whose members are representatives from the business and academic communities. This body determines the research topics on which VINT publishes and monitors the quality of the reports published in book form.

Only few organizations wise up to new digital competitors, as they usually come from outside their own sector and are not taken seriously at first. Their allegedly inferior propositions confuse prominent players, who should in fact be the very first to be fully aware of potentially disruptive innovation. To swing into action rapidly, existing organizations would be well advised to properly analyze anything resembling digital competition. Evidently, there are clear patterns behind the startup success marking a new techno-economic reality. Ecosystems, APIs, and platforms characterize this New Normal where customers have more freedom of choice and better service at lower costs. These successful disruptors are called two-sided market players, also known as multi-sided platform players. Companies like Uber and Airbnb are getting all the media attention, however there are over 9000 players (and counting) active in almost every industry. The new VINT report explores the new digital competition and presents: A analysis of the success factors of disruption 10 design principles of the new digital competition like Unbundle your organization processes, APIs first. Access over ownership and Building trust with social systems The need for every business to develop a API-strategy An appeal to the CIO and the IT department to use a leading digital approach and map out an offensive technological route.